Dr. Carla Rose Shapiro
Department of History
University of Toronto

Exhibiting Genocide: Curatorial Reflections on Representing the Experiences of 
Survivors of the Holocaust and the Rwandan and Cambodian Genocides

With reference to five Holocaust and Genocide-themed exhibitions that I have 
curated, I will examine how these presentations reflect current contemporary 
artistic discourses, museological practices and historiographic debates.  As 
these exhibits are created with a view to facilitate both remembrance and 
understanding of the historical events, my conference presentation will 
discuss their efficacy as embarking points for both commemorative practices 
and historical learning. My talk will also comment on the concerns raised by 
these exhibitions with regard to the interplay between the creatively driven 
visual constituents of each exhibit and the imperatives of historical accuracy.

The particular questions that my presentation at the IAGS conference will 
address are concentrated around the ways in which survivor testimony, 
photographic portraiture, family photography, material culture,  and framing 
techniques are employed in these exhibitions and how they create and reinforce 
particular types of memory. I will discuss a number of  curatorial challenges 
which arose during my work with Holocaust survivors and Cambodian and Rwandan 
genocide survivors.
 
A PowerPoint presentation will include exhibition views and details of the 
exhibition content.